Prevention science is a framework for research focused on preventing and/or mitigating behavioral and health challenges and increasing resiliency. The prevention science work at FPG draws from a diverse range of disciplines—including the behavioral, social, psychological, and neuro sciences—to understand the origins of social problems at the individual, community, and societal levels. Prevention strategies focus on ways to intervene before a problem emerges or worsens, avoiding adverse outcomes and their costs, and enhancing conditions conducive to healthy child and adolescent development, good mental and physical health, and strong families and communities.
Featured Publication
A recent paper from FPG Senior Research Scientist Diana Fishbein frames the Addiction Neuroscience Special Issue on “Neuroprevention for Substance Use” by describing a transdisciplinary neuroscience approach to understanding and intercepting developmental pathways to addiction. This integrative model derives from biomedical research that provides clues as to the underlying mechanisms of effects of existing and novel evidenced-based preventive strategies.
Featured Project
Drawing from 18 years of observational, survey, and medical record data gathered from The Family Life Project, a population-based study of children born in low-income, rural communities, a new project will derive new, remotely-sensed, geospatial measures of types of greenspaces around children’s residences, and integrate these measures with extensive child, family, and home data from 2 months to 16-18 years of age to address critical questions about the types and timing of green space exposures that offset risk for anxiety, depression, and ADHD.
Featured Person
Diana Fishbein, PhD, is a senior research scientist at the UNC Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute. Her studies use transdisciplinary methods and a developmental approach to understanding interactions between neurobiological processes and environmental factors. Her research supports the premise that underlying neurobiological mechanisms interact with the quality of our psychosocial experiences and environmental contexts to alter trajectories either toward or away from risk behaviors.
